The first detail she noticed was the glaring red error notification on the computer in the illusion.
In that instant, it felt as if she were back in the month before her graduation thesis defense, hunched over in the library day and night, fixing errors and debugging code.
If it were a minor mistake like a missing semicolon, it would have been fine, but encountering pointer errors or memory access violations made the fixing process incredibly troublesome.
Glancing at the code, there were nearly two thousand lines, with a total of thirty-two errors. A wave of inexplicable repulsion surged within her.
For some reason, she had never felt this much aversion toward code during her four years of university; it was as if just looking at it caused her physical nausea.
A voice in her head seemed to be saying, "You're a cultivator now; why are you still debugging code?"
"This is something that shouldn't even exist in this world. No one knows who wrote these thousands of lines of code, the coding style is different from yours, and there are thirty-two errors. How could you possibly fix them all?"
"By the time you finish, the other disciples will have already been recruited by Xiaoyao."
"Perhaps even after you finish, you'll still be in the illusion, or even sink deeper into it."
These voices were like a clinging poison, echoing incessantly in her mind.
Despite the inexplicable and sudden repulsion, Gu Ningyun forced herself to sit in front of the computer.
She simply thought that regardless of whether it worked or not, she should try it first. After all, this was the only thing she could find to do within the illusion.
If this method failed, she would simply try something else.
Don't think about the outcome; just do it.
Her heart was exceptionally firm; no matter what difficulties she encountered, as long as she was alive, she would persist.
The chaotic voices in her head eventually faded away, leaving only a single conviction in her heart.
She must—she absolutely must—enter Xiaoyao.
She had no idea how long she spent debugging the code, but once the final error was fixed and the window for a successful run popped up, she inexplicably emerged from the illusion.
She had passed that illusion, but she had done so in a bit of a daze.
She always remembered that feeling of being disconnected from reality, completely unable to find a breakthrough.
External attacks could be defended against; even if one's cultivation was insufficient, there were talismans, arrays, and sword talismans from sect seniors for assistance.
However, the attacks of an illusion were impossible to guard against.
The unknown was the most terrifying thing; once trapped in an illusion, many things became uncontrollable.
To this end, during her cultivation in the sect, she had specifically visited the library to browse through relevant jade slips.
But the methods for overcoming illusions mentioned in those slips were mostly related to one's state of mind, explained in profound and esoteric terms.
A few slips mentioned rare items that could assist in breaking illusions, but most were unique treasures that could only be obtained by the fated, making it unrealistic to rely on them.
Those seniors repeatedly emphasized in the jade slips that auxiliary items were merely external aids, and external aids could always fail.
Only by improving one's state of mind and becoming strong oneself could one successfully break out of an illusion every single time.
One could even turn the tables and use the illusions to temper their own will and state of mind.
Gu Ningyun took these heartfelt words to heart.
Later, she had accidentally discovered this travelogue.
This food cultivator senior recorded in the travelogue that every time he ate Blue Lake Scallop meat, it was like experiencing an illusion.
Using a hand seal he created, he could adjust the input of spirit energy to change the amount of residual toxin in the scallop meat, thereby controlling the difficulty of the illusion.
At the beginning, the toxin could be reduced to a tiny amount, only enough to confuse a small fish.
After eating it, a cultivator could more easily regain their consciousness and wake up.
After multiple consumptions, a cultivator's mind and will would be tempered and strengthened within these illusions.
Breaking through illusions would then become much more natural.
Later, when the illusions brought by that small amount of toxin were no longer an obstacle, one could adjust the spirit energy output while performing the hand seal to retain more toxin in the scallop, gradually increasing the difficulty of the illusion.
This would continue until the final result mentioned by the food cultivator was achieved—becoming completely immune to all low-grade illusions and thirty percent faster at breaking high-grade ones.
In the travelogue, this food cultivator senior also specifically recorded the method for performing the hand seals and even drew the corresponding hand seals.
If the jade slips she read earlier taught the theory of improving one's state of mind to break illusions, then this travelogue provided her with the opportunity to practice those methods and temper her will.
Gu Ningyun had used her sect points to copy the travelogue and had kept it with her ever since.
It wasn't until this voyage, when she saw the first stop on the route—the blue sea coral region—that the contents of the travelogue surfaced from her vast memory.
On the first day aboard the spirit ship, Gu Ningyun sat in her cabin, her divine sense peering into her space.
On a spirit ship crowded with cultivators, she wouldn't be foolish enough to physically enter her space, even if the cabin was protected by an array.
She was simply considering that previously, she had always entered the space herself to work and plant spirit plants.
It would be much better if it wasn't so troublesome.
She used her divine sense to poke at the grass in the space, tentatively thinking to herself, "I want to dig a large pool in this last bit of open space, the kind that can raise sea beasts."
Just as her thought finished, the space rumbled and trembled.
Then, a massive pit covering fifty square meters and reaching a depth of five thousand meters appeared in the final bit of open ground within the space.
Gu Ningyun's divine sense flickered; she almost failed to control her expression.
A cultivator's divine sense was actually the externalized power of the primordial spirit, an extension of one's own perception, which could be used for exploring surroundings, transmitting messages, and more.
If one practiced specific divine sense techniques, this power could be utilized for various purposes, such as divine sense object manipulation or divine sense attacks.
During the Qi Refining stage, the sea of consciousness had just opened, and the primordial spirit was still in the stage of adapting to externalizing divine sense, so one could not practice divine sense techniques.
This was similar to how, before the age of six, a child's spirit roots were already formed, but the primordial qi brought from the womb had not yet been naturally absorbed by the body, so they could not undergo spirit root testing or begin cultivation.
Although Gu Ningyun's primordial spirit was stronger than that of cultivators of the same level due to her epiphany, she was still in the Qi Refining stage and had naturally never practiced such techniques.
She had once passed by the divine sense technique section of the library and, out of curiosity, glanced at that area.
The bookshelves holding the techniques were shrouded in a thick mist, making the contents invisible.
When she tried to look closer, a line of blue text emerged from the surface of the white mist: "Training in divine sense techniques is prohibited until reaching Foundation Establishment."
Fine, then she would wait until after Foundation Establishment. She wasn't curious at all now.
She really wasn't curious.
In any case, due to this unavoidable reason, it should have been impossible for Gu Ningyun to dig such a large pit in the space with her current divine sense.
Her previous thought had only been an attempt.
Since she could store and retrieve items in the space with a mere thought, perhaps it was also possible to change the layout within the space.
If it hadn't worked, she would have had to ask Jiang Yao to refine several large fish tanks to raise the Blue Lake Scallops.
Who would have thought that a simple attempt would actually succeed?
The space had even given her a massive surprise—she had thought a pool a hundred meters deep would be good enough, but she hadn't expected the space to truly follow the specifications for raising sea beasts, making the pool a full five thousand meters deep.
Rate on N.U.
